Thanks alot that great. I hadnt come accross this ieda before. Interesting that it uses set operations but relies on the fact that the record sets will be processed row...

Thanks for the reply

I came up with a similair method

declare @tel

set @tel = '+1-310-414-0909'

declare @len int

declare @position int

declare @character varchar(1)

declare @number varchar (25)

select @len = len(@tel), @position =...

Yep the the lock will remain untill the preocess trigger is completed. You could use the trigger to insert relevant rows into a table and then use a scheduled job...

'bmail'  (free download) is also reliable using xp_cmdshell